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thefirstknife · 4 months ago

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The Thread Unfurls Against the Clocks: Saint-14 and how we saved him

Hello. It's time. I already did one summary of how we saved Saint, but I want to go even more in-depth because I later realised that so much of this is unavailable and also happened so long ago that most people don't even know where to look for it and what to look for. I also want to address all the adjacent lore like the stuff about the Sundial and also how it all relates to the current plot.

Finally, I want this to serve as an explanation that there's something very weird going on and that the Saint we have is the real Saint. I've seen people already super resigned after this week's story, simply accepting that there was a reveal that he is truly the "wrong" Saint. I want to analyse all we have on Saint in-depth and focus on how we saved him to show the level of detail involved because I think it's important to understand things in the episode.

Obviously, really compelling lore changes can happen and work out, but in this case I'm just not feeling it, for various reasons. We'll see, but I still think this is worth putting together and that we have plenty of indications that we saved him "correctly" so to speak.

Saint is a unanimously beloved character and one that is so closely linked to our player character as well. The setup for his return was established so long ago and was kept consistent the entire time. I feel like the stuff in Echoes is almost like a culmination of it all, as well as a reminder about what we've done. We'll suffer for a bit for sure but there is no doubt in my mind that Saint will come from this safe and healed. No matter what ends up being revealed, I believe he will be fine.

Contents! Long post under. Spoilers for Echoes Act 2, mostly just in the Echoes section.

Intro

Curse of Osiris quest

Season of Dawn

What's up with the Sundial?

Echoes

Intro

I'm not sure how familiar people are with the full scope of Saint-14, but he's been a character since the beginning. We didn't know much about him at all; the first mention was in vanilla D1 in this grimoire about the Darkness, listing what various characters think about it. Saint's thoughts:

Saint-14's Position argues that the Darkness was an invading armada, an alien force of incredible - but tangible - power. Some adherents believe that this armada sprang from species rejected or discarded by the Traveler for their sins.

All things considered, he wasn't that far off! Really cool detail, but this lore was referenced in TFS, in the lore book Chirality, and especially Saint's bit:

* Saint-14's Position is the most eminently practical of the bunch, no matter how the man himself protests that such an obvious facet of the truth doesn't require a formal philosophical stance to be named for him.

There's 10 years separating these lore pieces! But they're still being referenced because there are some incredible nerds writing this.

This doesn't tell us much about Saint, besides that he's thinking in very practical terms. He views the Darkness as something that can be fought back. Note that at the start we don't know anything else about him, not even if he's a Guardian. In House of Wolves, we get this lore where the author (the Speaker) is going off about Osiris. We get a little piece about Saint; Saint-14 suggested that Osiris should become Vanguard Commander and also vouched for Osiris. This was the first piece of info that these two are familiar with each other. How far we've come since!

After that, we get his helmet as an exotic in The Taken King (though it has no lore other than the flavour text) and a little bit of insight into him with the first proper lore tab that actually features him as a character. It shows his iconic headbutt and ends with him deciding to follow Osiris to Mercury. A few little details are mentioned in flavour text on the following items, mostly quotes about or from Saint: 1, 2, 3, 4. Number 3 is interesting:

"Stand with your back to the Wall, and not even the Darkness itself will move you." —Saint-14

Remember that!

There's a few more in Rise of Iron, again, just flavour text. He's really funny here, and being his usual heroic self here. That's it for his stuff in D1. Saint-14 was some sort of historic figure, he was a Titan, he fought in historic battles, he fought against the Eliksni and he had some sort of connection with the Speaker and Osiris. He was a practical man, a warrior and a protector.

He wasn't really a full character or anything and only had a few quotes and one lore tab where he actually does something. But the stage was set! He was clearly a character they wanted to explore and they did, in Curse of Osiris.

Curse of Osiris quest

Curse of Osiris returned his helmet as an exotic item and immediately gave us hints about the expansion of Saint-14's character and where they're leading him. The lore tab on the exotic is a conversation between Cayde-6 and Lord Shaxx where Cayde-6 insists that Saint is not dead, while Shaxx is just kind of resigned to it. Cayde also notes that Saint was a "weirdo:"

C6: No one ever put down a Kell faster than he could. But man, he was a real weirdo. SX: Eccentricity was his strength. C6: Talking about the Speaker like you're related to him is eccentric. Claiming he's seen the future, that he fought Six Fronts fueled on the idea that some Guardian savior is coming? That's insane.

Wait a minute. Saint-14 claimed he's seen the future and that he believed in "some Guardian savior"? What's that about? Wink wink. Nudge nudge. To make things even more obvious, the remaining conversation is... about the Young Wolf:

SX: Belief is a hell of a thing. C6: Sure, yeah. One Guardian's going to fix everything. Kick Crota off the Moon. Make it look like us Vanguard know our head from our hindquarters. Hey, where are you going? SX: One of the new recruits from Old Russia I've had my eye on—entering the Crucible for the first time. C6: Hey, maybe they're the one. We'll call 'em Crota's End.

Maybe Cayde should've started making prophecies too! But yeah. This was the first proper hint about what they cooked up for Saint's story. Saint has apparently seen the future and believed in a "Guardian savior" and he fought for the City fuelled by this belief. Very interesting! To make things weirder, there's Saint-14's Gray Pigeon which also features some strange lore at the end where Saint addresses an unknown person:

To my inspiration. Your final gift to me I now send back to you. It will be good to see you again.

This was wild to read at the time because it clearly references something that we don't know about, but that's incredibly important to Saint. The theory was that he might be talking to us, the Young Wolf, but how?

That's where the quest comes in. Curse famously didn't have a lot of content, but it did have the post-campaign quest with Lost Prophecies. They were a set of quests where we essentially had to collect items to transform "prophecy tablets" into weapons in the Infinite Forge which was a sort of interactable area in the Lighthouse on Mercury:

There were a total of 11 of these, with the final one being to acquire the Perfect Paradox. Each weapon came with a prophecy in the flavour text and a lore tab. The final one however, Perfect Paradox, triggered a whole separate quest in two parts. In part one, we discover an old Vanguard comm signal coming from the Forest which we follow and analyse to discover that the signal is from Saint-14.

Detecting traces of familiar Light up here. Wait… Saint-14? He's been missing for decades. Saint was one of the greatest Titans who ever lived. Hero of Six Fronts. All that power and he just… vanished. The City's still looking for him.

This quest also features this conversation from Osiris and Sagira:

Osiris: If Saint-14 is lost in the Infinite Forest, it's because he came here to find us. Sagira: You can't blame yourself for every missing Guardian, Osiris. Osiris: For him I can.

If you're lucky (or unlucky, depending on how many emotions this gives you), you can hear this line from Sagira in Presage. This is where it comes from!

The quest is kinda set up in a way to make you think we'll actually be saving Saint here. We finally found his comm signal and it's leading us into the Forest. He's clearly affected the Vex and the Forest with his Light and he's fighting back. Osiris gets involved and urges us to find him. The whole thing feels like we're doing what we usually do; find a problem and fix it.

Part two of the quest continues in a similar vein. The quest is called "Not even the Darkness," btw. Remember that quote from Saint from The Taken King? Yeah. Anyway, we go back to following the trace leading us to Saint, into the Infinite Forest, this time into a simulated future. There, the Vex get alerted and summon a big Minotaur; Hagios, Reverent Mind (whose name means "sacred" in Greek, so essentially... Saint). We kill the Minotaur and then the area behind it opens; it appears to have been guarding it.

When it opens, we're treated to a bittersweet sight:

The area is beautiful, but it's a tomb. Saint-14's body is laid out like this in a pillar of light, surrounded by piles and piles of dead Vex. The Vex fought him for an unknown amount of time and they ended up respecting him; enough to create a tomb and seal his body and set a whole Vex mind to guard it, and apparently, revere it. Despite how hopeful we've been about saving him, he is dead.

As we approach his body, we take the remains of his personal weapon. Back at the Lighthouse, we use these remains and the prophecy to craft the weapon as it was; Perfect Paradox shotgun. The prophecy attached to it:

A tale that's different from the rest: the thread unfurls against the clocks. The one the Speaker loved the best must have a perfect paradox.

The prophecy is from Osiris, of course, which means that at some point when he was making them, he already knew about the strange fate of Saint-14. Not that he is dead; Osiris hoped to find him in the Forest. But his prophecy talks about time travel and a paradox. In the lore tab itself, Saint attached a letter to the gun in which he once again addresses a mysterious person. This person is now definitively identified as us:

All I have left is this weapon. The Cryptarchs say you crafted it yourself, built it out of scraps and Light and sheer will, inside the Infinite Forge. I'll make sure it finds its way back to you.

Well that's correct. We crafted the weapon in the Infinite Forge. But we only did so after recovering its remains from Saint's body, so how could he have had the gun in the first place? Almost like... there's some sort of a time travel paradox involved. This was naturally bizarre at the time; we had nothing else on Saint or any of this during this quest, just these vague baffling hints that there's more to the story. Especially since it involves our character; Saint repeatedly talks as if he had already met us. He says so in the letter as well:

I mourn that I will never reach the heights you have. To me, you represent everything a Guardian can become. Yours is a thriving City. So different from mine. My whole fourteenth life I fought to make my City yours. I never finished.

He knows that our City is thriving and that we are "everything a Guardian can become." But we've never seen him before. This was really confusing and there was also not even a promise that it would be resolved. But it felt like something that they cared about deeply.

It would take 3 years until we got the resolution.

Season of Dawn

This is a big one in general because they really wanted to be as attentive to all details as possible. Even before the season started, they released several weblore pieces to remind us of Saint and bring up some important information.

The first one was The Accolade, about Saint's past and heroic deeds revolving around saving people. The weblore focuses on explaining what his "accolades" are; aka his purple ribbons on his armour and ship. They're gifts from people he saved; tokens of appreciation that turned into a type of a ritual with Saint. If you're saved by Saint, you have to give him something purple and he will wear it with him and remember your name. It ends with Osiris shortly after we found Saint's grave. Osiris went to see it for himself, to check, to make sure. He also laments that he never asked about the ribbons.

The next one is a glimpse into the past, a conversation between Osiris and Saint as Saint hands him the Vanguard Commander title. It's a good look into how that all happened, as well as the differences in approach and beliefs between Osiris and Saint.

And then they released The Sundial weblore (TW for suicide if you're reading the full weblore. One of his Echoes does not have a good time). Osiris is found on Mercury with a machine he built, putting finishing touches on it. It's called the Sundial. Osiris built it in response to Saint being dead, the implication very much being that he intends to use some form of time travel or some other time shenanigans to change the outcome and save him. Osiris never recovered from learning that he's dead and from seeing his dead body in the tomb. The design is Sagira's, and he's also helped by Drifter, who shows up to check the math. I'll go more into the Sundial later.

Osiris wraps up his work on it and turns it on. He splits into his Echoes and enters the machine to start searching through Saint's timeline on Mercury with the intent to find the right moment with the right Saint to save him; he is specifically looking for the moment when they drain his Light.

Osiris’s Echoes scour Saint-14’s timeline on Mercury. But the corridors of time refuse to give way to the moment they need: Saint and the Martyr Mind in the depths of the Infinite Forest. The Echoes work tirelessly for weeks, then months in the space between moments. In desperation, he splits the dozen copies into many thousands more as the work continues fruitlessly.

Osiris experiences what the kids these days call "epic fail."

None of the Echoes ever approaches a Saint. They never find the right one.

Despite all the work put into this machine and all of his knowledge and skill, Osiris doesn't manage to use the Sundial successfully. He never finds the right moment and he never saves him. It's worth noting that when Osiris used thousands of his Echoes, he experienced the time and life of every single one. But for Osiris outside the Sundial, it's only been a few moments. In those few moments, he essentially lived thousands of lifetimes. And died thousands of times. I need people to understand the amount of effort he put into this and what kind of an emotional toll it had.

Completely defeated, he gives up and hides the Sundial. He moves on with his life, doing what he always does, until stuff suddenly changes, which is explored in the next weblore: Actions of Mutual Friends. Us killing the Undying Mind in the season before Dawn changed everything, for the Vex and everyone else. We essentially created a point of divergence. The Vex suddenly had to change their projections of the future; Osiris noticed this and got very concerned.

While he wasn't looking, his Sundial was found, by Psion sisters. They figure out the potential of the Sundial and work to reactivate it, which they succeed in. The Red Legion descends on Mercury, looking to use the Sundial to essentially rewrite the course of the Red War and win.

Osiris finds out and goes to Ikora, to the City, to ask for help. This is the topic of the next weblore: Desperate Times. Osiris defends his choice to make the Sundial to save Saint, despite everybody else basically trying to explain to him that the universe might implode because of it.

This is a lot of setup, but it's necessary. It all leads into what happens in the season and what the season revolves around; saving Saint. It wasn't even a secret, as they very clearly showed it right away in the trailer (best trailer they've ever done). The seasonal gameplay revolved around us using the Sundial to defeat the Red Legion and stop them from trying to figure out how to essentially change the course of history. We had to fight three different Psion bosses, one of each of the sisters, until the end, when the three of them joined together into a single Psion entity for us to defeat.

As we were using the Sundial for this, Osiris also told us about what he made it for originally. He explains a little bit about it and about his failure to succeed, then warns us against using it for ourselves, but doesn't stop us.

I told you before - I tried to save Saint-14. I bent the rules of time using a prototype of the Sundial. It allowed me to walk the corridors of time here on Mercury. But I failed. I never found Saint's final moment against the Vex. I encountered younger versions from his first mission to Mercury, among others. But none were the right Saint. The prototype Sundial still exists, accessible off the main deck. And it can still travel through Saint's personal timeline on this planet. But venture there at your own peril. He cannot be saved. I have walked every permutation of those corridors with a hundred thousand of my Echoes and found nothing. Saint-14 is lost.

Despite this, we make the attempt and then the first part of the quest starts. When we use it, the Sundial reacts. It reacts specifically to the Perfect Paradox:

The Shotgun you crafted in the Infinite Forge is reacting to the Sundial! An onboard transponder is broadcasting coordinates: a path through the Sundial, crossing two time periods. The prophecy blueprint you used to create the Perfect Paradox must have included this broadcast. If you can open up the initial chamber, I can align us to the first time period the broadcast is referencing.

The two time periods are two points in time where it's relevant that we meed with Saint. The first one is in the Dark Age, when he came to Mercury with civilians in an attempt to reclaim the planet and help the struggling population of Earth with resources and possibly old Golden Age technologies. We connect to Saint via comms. He is devastated and demoralised. He failed to protect his people and he's also under siege by the Eliksni and is more or less resigned to dying. Lucky for him, we get there in time to help him out of this situation.

After the battle, we talk to him. Our Ghost hesitates a little but then decides to do it anyway; he shows Saint the projection of the Last City from the future, to prove to him that the everything will be fine if he continues to fight and stays hopeful. We also give him the Perfect Paradox, to help him fight. The loop is set! This gun was crafted in the future and was brought to the past. In time, Saint will die with it and we will pick up its remains from his body, allowing us to craft it in the first place.

Saint-14: What is this? Ghost: The Perfect Paradox. Built by my Guardian out of spare parts and Light and sheer will to aid you.

More importantly, this is the moment that Saint spoke of to other people that made him seem crazy. As we've seen in lore from years before, Saint kept saying that he saw a thriving City and that there's some sort of Guardian savior coming and that he's seen this future. He also wrote in that letter how we gave him the shotgun and how we saved him. This part of the quest is constructed around this lore. This moment is what Saint remembered and talked about. We saved him and invigorated his will to keep going. This is why he is the way he is.

We part ways and leave the Sundial. Ghost immediately goes to check if we messed anything up and to let us know that there's one more point in time to go to:

Okay, let's check the Tower databases to make sure we didn't just wreck the entire timeline. Queuing "Saint-14"… Records state he was a former Commander of the Tower. He vanished on a final mission to Mercury in search of the exiled Warlock Osiris. Well, those are the big beats. Timeline intact. Good job, Saint. But our trip's not over. That broadcast I picked off the Perfect Paradox marked one more set of coordinates within the Sundial.

The second part of the quest started a bit later, but it doesn't waste any time once it does. We're immediately linked up to the other point in time that Perfect Paradox reacted to and we're back in simulated future, in the same area where back in Curse we fought Hagios who guarded the entry to Saint's tomb. Except now, we find Saint who has just had his Light drained from him by another Vex mind; Agioktis, Martyr Mind (note that the name is more or less in the same vein as "hagios," aka "sacred," dedicated to Saint). This is the moment Osiris was looking for, but couldn't find it, because he didn't have the Perfect Paradox.

This is the Vex mind they built to destroy Saint and we find him as his Light has already been taken. But Saint is still eager to fight and greets us happily. Unfortunately Saint is then restrained, the Vex doing everything in their power to kill him. However, this time he's not alone. We're there and we fight in his stead. We manage to piss off the Martyr Mind enough for it to now move to restrain us, which frees Saint, returning his Light to him as well. Saint then delivers the final blow to the Martyr Mind which frees us!

Saint-14: It's been a long time, my friends. I've chased your memory for centuries. You should go now. Those who could kill me are dead. You've made sure of that. Ghost: And what if the Vex take your Light again? Saint-14: Impossible. It cost them everything to build the Martyr Mind. When you crushed it, they were doomed. Ghost: You want us to leave you? You'll be stuck here for years. Saint-14: You've both done plenty. Just open the Infinite Forest gate for me. I'll meet you the long way around, at the entrance. Saint-14: What's a few more years of fighting Vex?

Saint decides to stay in the Forest and wait until we open it from the outside for him, in the future. This is how he leaves in the right time, instead of too early for his timeline, so nothing else is really affected. He waits it out and then exits the Forest at the time of Season of Dawn. This gives us one of the shortest but also the best cutscenes ever. As a note, in the cutscene, when Saint leaves, the Forest gate looks new, like from Mercury's past. This is because of the Sundial's effects on the surface of Mercury at the time, splitting the surface through time, so the Forest gate looked like it's from the past, but it's not. It's present day Mercury.

When we report this to Osiris, to say that he's amazed would be an understatement. I often quoted this from him, especially when people were being weird about Osiris and claiming he doesn't like us or whatever:

In his youth, he talked often about the Guardian who inspired him. I should have guessed it would be you.

We've done the impossible. Literally. The quest is called "Impossible Task." Osiris did everything and he couldn't do it and he lost hope that it would be done. But we did it, because we created the time loop; a connection with Saint that allowed us to use the Sundial in a way Osiris could not.

Saint has been saved! After this, he settled in the Tower. He had a series of minor quests and errands, the best one being the quest for the Devil's Ruin exotic which featured a really long and funny conversation between Saint and Shaxx. Another one is obviously the Corridors of Time quest which is genuinely cannot be compared to anything else as it was a community puzzle of epic proportions. An article that showcases just a little bit of how bonkers it was.

The important part of it is that the culmination of the quest featured us finding our own grave and Saint narrating a eulogy for us. This is important to us now for two reasons: 1) on our grave was a sword, a sword we received as an actual item in TFS, directly from the Traveler to fight the Witness 2) it's possibly a different timeline. The second one is unclear because we simply can't know when we die, but the eulogy specifies that the sword was shattered in the final confrontation where we died. Our current sword is chipped, and it wasn't when we originally got it in the campaign. So either this is a different timeline where it didn't shatter or this isn't that confrontation when we die and it will shatter at some other point in the future.

In this post I also noted how the music that plays in our grave scene and the music that played in TFS when we get the sword is the same. A very clear and deliberate choice. This is a very cool link to Season of Dawn that they brought back over 4 years later.

With the Corridors of Time puzzle ending and the Corridors closing, that concluded the Saint stuff. He was finally saved and he could rest in the Tower! And we know everything that has happened since.

Okay. So...

What's up with the Sundial?

We don't know! But I want to get into it because it's one of those things that they made sure to hint about, without fully explaining it so obviously every weird nerd online (me) wants to figure it out.

Back in The Sundial weblore, there are some peculiar and never explained details about the Sundial that have been kinda concerning and just intriguing to think about. There are a few lines essentially saying that whatever is at its core, it's not good. First is Sagira's:

“That work was theoretical! If the Vanguard find out what you did to build it—“

What did he do to build it? No clue. The infamous core is described only as:

He turned to look at the fluctuating glow of the exposed chronometric core.

When the Drifter shows up, he immediately reacts to this, fairly negatively which makes things more ominous since Drifter tangles with a lot of weird and bad stuff himself. So if he's disturbed about this...:

Drifter walked to the central spire and put his ear up against it. “This core…” he said, leaning close. His eyes darted back to Osiris. “It’s whispering.” Osiris’s expression didn’t change; his arms didn’t uncross. “We’ll seal the core away. I understand the ramifications.” “Good luck keeping that contained. Not something I would bargain with, hotshot.”

The core "whispers." Osiris understands the ramifications. They're both so frustratingly vague so the only thing we're left with is this ominous vibe of something bad being at the center of the Sundial.

This whispering, alongside a few other concerning descriptions and implications of the Sundial is mentioned in yet another weblore that I only briefly mentioned earlier because it wasn't relevant to Saint stuff; Sisters. It's about the Psions finding the machine.

The Psions could somehow feel the Sundial. Or perhaps just the effects it had on time on Mercury, even while it was powered down and hidden.

“Small disturbances,” said oldest Ozletc, the wisest. “Little currents in this timeline. Can you see them, sister?” “I can taste them,” said second-born Tazaroc, the hungriest of her sisters. “I can feel the edges.” Third-born Niruul, the quietest among them, reached her hand out to test the air. “As can I,” said she. “And something else. The source is disguised. The technology is Human, but refined. Surprisingly so.”

They also note the whispering, as well as its potential:

A strange device shimmered into existence around them. They looked up the length of an enormous, golden spire. “It whispers,” said Tazaroc. “Then block your ears,” said Ozletc. “Do you see the potential in this?” “Chaos,” said Niruul. “No,” said Ozletc. “Opportunity. See how it tugs at the fabric of our time? Can you see the seams?”

They also make the strange comparison to the OXA:

“It is so clear,” said Niruul, reverent. “An unobstructed glimpse into what was and what will be.” “Not the troubled ramblings of a mad thing, like the OXA,” said Tazaroc.

The Sundial offered something more and better than the OXA ever could, implying, perhaps, that these machines have something in common; possibly something beyond simply Vex technology. My insanity about this has been going on for a long time and also helped with the TFS CE lore. A bit of a tangent, but also possibly related, depending on what the core is.

Furthermore, Osiris refused to tell Saint about details of the Sundial, including remaining vague about its core in this weblore:

[u.2:13] One is a manifestation of Light. The other… reserved for Taken Kings. Better suited for traversing the Sundial because of what lies at its core. [u.1:14] One day you’ll have to tell me exactly what you and the Guardian did to bring me back. [u.2:14] We did what we had to. Trust me.

So what is it? Well, we know:

It whispers (very obvious and easily detected, both by Drifter and the Psions)

It's something bad (Drifter's reaction to it is uncharacteristic for a man who tangles with the Taken for a living and deals with strange dangerous artifacts all the time)

Osiris' Echoes are better suited for the Sundial because of its core, and Echoes are something "reserved for Taken Kings." Bizarre way of saying it to avoid explaining it

Similar to the OXA, and possibly any other time/prediction machines based on Vex tech (because the OXA itself is confirmed to be more or less the same as the FWC Device, for example)

To recharge it, we needed to feed it Light. This is particularly concerning with what Osiris says about it: "The Sundial is my greatest creation and my greatest regret. What I had to do to forge it I can never take back. As a result, it has components that consume Light. And if you're serious about operating it again, you'll need to feed it. Nothing is free. Ever."

What this points to, to me at least, is Darkness. The core is a Darkness artifact of some sort, merged with Vex tech. This only gained more proof to me with all the new lore about the Darkness and how it governs the mind and memory, especially when the Vex are involved. To the Vex, the future is memory. Merging Darkness artifacts with the Vex might be able to create dangerous time travel machines or machines that displace consciousness through time and timelines, like the OXA and the Device, allowing the user to "predict."

To make things even more convoluted (and me more insane), there's an almost perfect explanation for what this artifact might be. So perfect that I feel like it's too good to be true, tbh. It's a Nezarec relic. I will now list everything that connects this:

It would explain the Darkness artifact. Nezarec's relics were full of Darkness and were being used by utilising that Darkness

Drifter's involvement and experience with it. Hell, the Drifter may have even provided this relic to Osiris, since he had one and did not particularly enjoy having it, which was detailed in Lightfall when they showed us how he got it. Plunder was also rich on this, showing us that the Drifter immediately recognised the relics and understood what they were.

Whispering. Darkness in general has a whispering thing; the Veiled statues, the Witness, the old stories about Dredgen Yor, there's a lot of whispering going on here. But it's really super connected to Nezarec. His relics were whispering to us in the H.E.L.M.. The glaive? Nezarec's Whisper. Another disciple also called him a "whispering Nightmare." All of Root of Nightmares armour lore has it as well, with Nezarec tormenting his victims with whispers; for example here, and here, and maybe even here. I could go on. He's the whisper guy. Literally, Nimbus called him Mr. Whispers.

Psions. The Psion sisters found and reactivated the Sundial... Somehow. They especially were able to almost instinctively locate it despite Osiris hiding it well enough. The Psions also needed quite a lot of time to activate it again and admired the complexity of the encryption, despite it being human, so we can't really say that they found it easily because Osiris' did a poor job of hiding it. Were they drawn to it? Were they drawn to it because of its core? Psions are inherently linked to Nezarec. It's been confirmed back in Lightfall, but also curiously mentioned again in TFS with the Lost Ghosts quest (timestamped here). I'm definitely hoping for some Psion content in the future but this is fairly interesting in this context. Season of Dawn was really the only proper Psion-focused storyline.

Osiris' coma. His coma appears to have been somehow paracausal. At least strange! The scans were showing that he has "no residual activity" in his brain, despite us having lore from his POV showing us that he had a very vivid and visceral activity. He was able to feel some external stimuli, but was mostly drifting through strange visions, seemingly hopping between his... Reflections. Or possibly Echoes. His final thoughts here are also of the Sundial; as if his mind was somehow stuck in there, or lost, trying to find his way out of it. This could just be a consequence of his memories constructing something for him to experience so obviously it's just cycling through what he knows, but...

Waking Osiris up from his coma happens with the use of Nezarec's relics. An important point to note here is that this wasn't so much about it being Nezarec's relics; it had more to do with the inherent Darkness they consist of and Darkness can help the mind and consciousness move or awaken. However, given all of this and given his POV from the coma and the possibility that his mind might have been stuck somewhere with his Echoes in the Sundial, if the Sundial's core is a Nezarec relic, then a Nezarec relic had more chance to bring him back. It's such a perfect connection that I feel insane thinking about it and it feels like I'm constructing a fanfic, but also. I think it's worth considering. Cutscene of him waking up + article from Bungie that details on the whole idea of waking him up with Darkness and why that's important for understanding Darkness.

I have to mention the other theory, especially in comparison with all the above to try and illustrate why it never made sense to me and that is the popular theory that the core of the Sundial is an Ahamkara bone and that the Sundial worked on wish magic.

I'm not quite sure why this was even a theory to be honest. Even back in the day of Dawn, this never really resonated with me because it seems that the only reason this was a theory was Drifter saying "not something I would bargain with" and... Possibly whispers? Obviously a lot of things can whisper, and Ahamkara have been also mentioned doing so, but I don't find this significant to Ahamkara enough for identification just through that. I also don't think that one mention of the word "bargain" is enough either. Many have bargained with Darkness too. There's simply an overlap between Darkness and Ahamkara here, but there are also other pieces that are more closely linked to Darkness like eating Light. We could go even further, if we're considering Ahamkara; we could also consider Worm Gods, for example. The point is that several things can fit here, but I feel like there's overall more things pointing at Darkness.

What gets me the most is that they alluded to this in Season of the Wish, in what seems fairly obvious as disproving this theory to me. Riven and Osiris talk:

Riven: Isn’t it unfortunate your City hunted down all of my kind, Osiris? You might have wished for Saint-14’s return from the Forest. Osiris: And have him trade the Vex’s torment for yours? Riven: Perhaps you simply didn’t want him back badly enough to pay the price. Osiris: Save the bait for someone naïve enough to take it.

I talked about this earlier, but there's several layers of why the moment I heard this, it sounded like it's here to disprove Osiris using an Ahamkara. First, Ahamkara wish magic would be felt by Riven. If Osiris put an Ahamkara into the Sundial, then he did use wish magic and she would know about it. In that case she would not have said this; perhaps she would've teased him about using her powers to save Saint, but that would be a completely different sentence.

Second, Osiris is well aware and wary of wish magic. He knows that had he done so, he would've probably put some form of torment (wish magic backfire) on Saint. This, to me, indicates that not only did he not do this, he didn't even consider it as an option.

Third, if Osiris had an Ahamkara bone and was considering to use it, he could've just done so without building the Sundial. Why bother with the machine if you can just instantly make a wish and the wish doing exactly as you want? Obviously with a caveat, but still. It would've worked right away. Perhaps the Sundial was an attempt to contain the backfire, mixing wish magic with Vex tech to try and prevent the whole thing from going backwards, but even then; Osiris knew there are possible consquences.

And fourth, even if he did all that, it just didn't work, which would be quite uncharacteristic for wish magic. It's paracausal; it should override any Vex tech in the Sundial. If he made a wish, he should ask for a refund! The Sundial worked only because of the paracausal loop we created with the Perfect Paradox and it had nothing to do with anyone's wishes; definitely not ours.

One interesting thing for this theory is the way they said how similar wishing and simulations are. It happened in Wish and now again in Echoes. Here's a freebie for the Ahamkara theory enthusiasts.

Personally though, I simply feel like there's much more connecting and sensible explanation with it being a Darkness relic, rather than Ahamkara.

HOWEVER. The truth is that we simply don't know. I am personally more into it being Darkness (and Nezzy specifically), but I could be wrong and the Ahamkara theory could be proven correct somehow. Hell, it could be something completely different. It could also be nothing; as in, we will never know because they won't tell us because it doesn't matter.

And technically, it doesn't! Nothing really changes if this doesn't get answered. I want that to be clear. This isn't some sort of lore breaking detail. But you know. The nerds would love to know. I really wanted to get into this now that we've had a resurgence in interest about Saint and how we saved him.

Echoes

Okay, so why this monster of an essay? Well, because Echoes revolves around Saint and the Conductor trying to convince him that he's the wrong Saint. That Osiris acted out of grief and pulled a random Saint from the timelines, that he's simply satisfied with what he got because he couldn't get his original Saint because that Saint died.

Saint is convinced in this; that he's some sort of an aberration in the timeline, a simulation or a copy or just the wrong Saint from the wrong timeline. Even an error that must be corrected.

And I simply think that people are too quick to jump to the conclusion that this is the story being told, especially because of the radio message this week where we're shown that Saint and Osiris suddenly have different memories. But I feel like people have already forgotten the other radio message, from week 1. You know, the one where Saint and Osiris talk about their memories and the memories match perfectly:

Saint-14: Osiris. Do you remember when we knew? Osiris: Knew what? Saint-14: That we were meant to be together. There was one moment... though, it took us time to get to it. Oh, but our Hunter Vanguard, so smart, Tallulah... she knew before we did. All our little squabbles and bickering. She saw it first. Osiris: it, uh — ah, well, I was — obtuse. Stubborn. I couldn't recognize my own emotions. Then, Tallulah told me to.. "Be serious". Saint-14: Haha! I remember. So yes, she told me later. Was good laugh. Osiris: Well, I'm glad you found it so amusing. Saint-14: Who could not look back and smile? And I remember your smile, then. So knowing, and so full of our future together. Osiris: What brought these memories on? Saint-14: Hmm. I think about others who will have those same moments now that they know they will a future free from the Black Fleet. Now they have a chance to find love and be happy, like us. We can look behind, but also forward. We cannot see what is coming, but we know it is good. Osiris: You're certain? Saint-14: About us? Yes. Since the beginning. Now, and always.

We have this memory as a lore tab as well. I think this was given to us deliberately, to show us that Saint and Osiris have identical memories and that Saint's memories were never in question and that their history is perfectly aligned... Until he got yoked. Something changed when he got yoked, not when he was saved. This is a new development, which tells me that the Conductor did something to him, rather than Osiris saving the wrong Saint. Because until now, this was never a problem. Saint never had discrepancies in his memories before, with anyone he ever interacted with.

If we take a look at the whole story of how he was returned, it's beyond clear that Osiris was very fixated on saving his Saint, not a random one, and that we went to great lengths to do just that. We only ever interacted with one Saint, the same one, and we linked each other with the Perfect Paradox. It cannot be any other Saint, even with the existence of other timelines. This Saint and this Perfect Paradox are ours, from our timeline, the originals.

However, other timelines do exist. And some entities can access them. The Vex are obviously first on the list. Characters like Elsie and Osiris have also seen them. And clearly, the Conductor should be capable of this as well. It's beyond clear now that the Conductor is Maya Sundaresh. Maya, who was simulated 227 times by the Vex and had those 227 copies of her wandering the Vex network and different timelines.

If the Conductor knows where to look and how, she could see these timelines, including these other Saints, and she could've fed Saint false information while he was yoked. Implanting memories of other Saints perhaps, or something similar.

I know a lot of people weren't there for Dawn, let alone Curse. There's a lot of information about Saint here and a lot of really interesting clues from the past about what's happening now. It's also really interesting how many little details have been transferred through the story over time, showing that this is a plotline they care about very much and want to make sure doesn't get messed up.

There's probably a lot more stuff we could get into for speculation and explanations because there's still more stuff that plays a role in this. The Infinite Forest is a big one, and I suspect the Perfect Paradox is as well, as we're likely to get it next week or the week after as part of the story. Because it should be relevant to the story! It's an inherent part of Saint's story and why he's with us now in the first place.

So what's really going on? We're not entirely sure yet, but assuming that the Conductor is correct and that her messing with Saint is revealing something about Saint's legitimacy is I believe wrong. I think she's using him as an experiment and that she's messing with him, and by extension, with us as well. There's no way that we've had a "wrong" Saint this whole time and that nobody ever had any issues with him. That nobody had any discrepancies between memories with him. Not Osiris, not Ikora, not Shaxx, not Saladin, not Zavala or anyone else Saint interacted with since he's been back. As I mentioned, literally the first radio message shows us Saint and Osiris with matching memories.

It only started after he was yoked. Which means that the yoke and the Conductor did something to him, possibly shown him some other timelines or fed him false information.

Can't wait to see where this is going. I'm not sure how much this Act will cover and if we'll get a resolution to this right now or if it will stretch to Act 3, though if it doesn't get stretched, then I wonder what will the draw of Act 3 even be. Possibly just dealing with the Conductor? I'm very excited. This episode being so focused on Saint and Osiris and the whole throwbacks to Dawn and other past content has been really good. I'm enjoying it very much, this is my entire jam. I had high hopes for Echoes and so far it's been going great.

I'm super excited to see how they solve this and what comes of it and how much of this information will be relevant. And of course, if it will end up being correct! Because as much as I have my theories and as much as I'm convinced that there's something off here and that our Saint cannot be the wrong Saint, I could still be wrong. Looking forward to finding out!

#destiny 2 #saint-14 #osiris #vex #conductor #long post #lore vibing #i hope that this is also helpful to people!#i genuinely could've gotten into more. there are several unhinged tangents to go into at any point

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